Portable electronic devices are increasing in numbers and availability at a staggering pace. Personal digital assistants (PDAs), digital recorders, digital cameras, special watches, and the like each provide a high level of convenience to users without the limitations and imperfections sometimes found with older technology recording media, such as analog tapes and film. One problem encountered as the use of such devices increases is the limited digital storage space. For example, in digital cameras, the number of photographs available typically depends on the amount of memory available for the camera. While a user may be able to take 20 or 30 pictures using a low quality resolution, if the user desires a higher quality photo, they may only be able to take three or four pictures before using up the memory. The user would then typically have to transfer the photos to a larger memory, such as on a hard disk or other similar device, and erase the camera's memory before taking more pictures. Similar situations may typically be experienced with digital recorders, PDAs, and the like.
One solution to this problem is for the user to purchase additional memory or a memory with a larger capacity. While this solution generally provides a temporary solution (i.e., the larger memory is still finite and, thus, generally limited to a finite number of pictures, or minutes of record time without erasing its content), it is expensive to buy multiple storage media and/or media with large volumes of space.
A second solution is to routinely empty the storage media into a larger memory resource, such as a hard disk, CD-ROM, printer memory, or the like. Many current electronic devices generally require the user to remove the storage media from the device and then insert the media into a drive suitable for the storage media. Some devices, such as the Sony Mavica (TM) line of digital cameras may use typically standard 3.5 inch floppy diskettes that generally make transporting the stored images onto a larger computer memory more convenient. However, many other devices use media such as Compact Flash (CF) cards, PC cards, SmartMedia (TM), multimedia cards, or proprietary storage media such as Sony's Memory Stick (TM), each tend to require special drives for transporting the media content to a typical desktop, laptop, and/or notebook computer system. Such specialty media drives also add costs to the user. These “non-standard” media make emptying the storage media more inconvenient.
Some portable electronic devices may also be connected directly to another computer system to download the memory's file contents. Some such devices will also generally have removable memory media as described above. However, some may only provide for non-removable, built-in memory, such as with random access memory (RAM), Flash read-only memory (ROM), or the like. The direct connection option generally allows for device memory to be transferred without the necessity of purchasing specialized memory drives. However, the downloading process typically drains the energy resource of the device (e.g., disposable or rechargeable batteries) more quickly, thus reducing the effective length of operation for the device. Downloading from the device also typically is much slower than downloading a removable memory in a memory drive. Therefore, the direct connection method not only typically drains the resources of the device, it generally takes longer to transfer the information as well.
While many current portable electronic devices allow for memory management through removable memory and direct-link connection to a target computer system, in many instances, a user may not have access to an external memory or computer system in order to transfer the stored device data. For example, if a user is conducting an interview using a digital recorder, the user may not have access to a larger memory or computer system during the interview. If the interview lasts longer than expected, the user would generally be forced either to stop the interview, stop recording the interview, or record over portions of the memory. None of these may be practical solutions.